He had said absolutely nothing. But look, manner, and gestures were so peremptory, perfervid, pregnant, that all, even Hans Castorp, were convinced they had heard something of high moment; or, if aware of the total lack of matter and sequence in the speech, certainly never missed it. We wonder how it might appear to a deaf person. Perhaps the impressiveness of what he saw would make him draw an altogether wrong conclusion as to what he might have heard but for his infirmity—and cause him to suffer accordingly. Such people incline to mistrust and bitterness. On the other hand, a young Chinaman at the other end of the table, who possessed too little of the language to understand what had been said, but had yet assiduously listened and looked, clapped his hands and called out: “Très bien, très bien.”
And Mynheer Peeperkorn came “to the point.” He drew himself up, swelled his broad chest, buttoned the check frock-coat over the clerical waistcoat; the pose of his white head was regal. He beckoned to a “dining-room girl”—it was the dwarf—and though busily engaged, she at once obeyed his weighty summons, and stood, milk jug and coffeepot in hand, by his chair. She too felt drawn to look at him with an ingratiating smile on her large, old face; she too was rapt by the pallid gaze beneath the deep-wrinkled brow; by the lifted hand, whose thumb and forefinger were joined in an O, while the other three with their lanceolate nails stood stiffly up.
“My child,” said he, “very well. Very well indeed—very. You are small—what is that to me? On the contrary. I find it a positive good, I thank God, that you are as you are; I thank God you are so small and full of character. What I want of you is also small and full of character. But in the first place, what is your name?”
She said, smiling and stammering, that her name was Emerentia.
“Splendid,” cried Peeperkorn, throwing himself back in his chair and stretching out his arm toward her. He cried it in the tone of one who would say “Wonderful! Is not everything wonderful?”—“My child,” he went on, with a perfectly serious face, almost sternly, “you surpass all my expectations. Emerentia! You utter it so modestly—yet, taken with your person, it holds out such boundless possibilities. Beautiful. Worth dwelling upon, communing with in the depths of one’s—in order to—understand me, my child: as a term of endearment—the pet name. It might be Rentia. Though Emchen would equally warm and fortify the heart—in short, for the moment, I will abide by Emchen. Emchen, then, Emchen my child, attend. A little bread, my love. But hold! Let no misunderstanding come between us—for in your somewhat over life-size face I seem to read—bread, Renzchen, bread; yet not baker’s bread, of which in this place we have enough and to spare, in all conceivable forms. Not corn that is baked, my angel, but corn that is burnt—in other words, distilled. Bread of God, bread of sunshine, little pet name; bread for the laving of man’s weary spirit. But I still have misgivings—whether the sense of this word I would even consider substituting for it another, the beautiful word ‘cordial’—if here we did not encounter a new danger, that it might be understood in the ordinary thoughtless sense—No more, Rentia. Settled. Set‑tled, and out of the question. Rather would I, in consideration of the debt of honour I acknowledge, right cordially to rejoice your characteristic smallness—a gin, love, and haste thee. A Schiedamer, Emerentia. Bring me one hither.”
“A geneva, sir,” repeated the dwarf, and spun three times round on herself, seeking a place for her jugs, which she finally deposited on Hans Castorp’s table, quite near him, obviously not wishing to burden Herr Peeperkorn with the same. She put wings to her feet, and he soon received his desire. The little glass was so full that the “bread” overflowed and bedewed the plate. He took the grain distillation between thumb and middle finger, and held it toward the light. “Pieter Peeperkorn,” he declared, “will now take unto himself a glass of Hollands.” He appeared to chew the liquid somewhat, then swallowed it down; “And now,” he said, “I look on you all with new eyes.” He lifted Frau Chauchat’s hand from the cloth, carried it to his lips and laid it back, letting his own rest for some while upon it.
An odd man, and of great personal weight, though incoherent. The population of the Berghof were enthusiastic over him. It was reported that he had only lately retired from his colonial interests and transferred them to the continent. He was said to have a magnificent house at The Hague, and another at Scheveningen. Frau Stöhr called him a money magnet (the unhappy woman meant “magnate”) and indicated the string of pearls Frau Chauchat had worn in the evening since her return to the Berghof. These pearls, Frau Stöhr considered, were scarcely a token of affection from the trans-Caucasian husband; more likely they came out of the common travelling-trunk. She winked and jerked her head in the direction of Hans Castorp, whose discomfiture she parodied with her mouth drawn down—no, illness and affliction had had no power to refine Caroline Stöhr; her jeers over the young man’s disappointment positively went beyond bounds. He preserved his composure, and corrected her blunder, not unadroitly. It was “magnate,” not “magnet” she had meant to say, he told her. Money-magnate. But “magnet” was not so bad after all—certainly Herr Peeperkorn had a good deal that was attractive about him. The schoolmistress, Fräulein Engelhart, with a wry smile, flushing dully, but not looking at him as she spoke, asked how he liked the new
